Raphael's work focuses on typography, information design and editorial design. He is a strong visual thinker who loves to play around with image and type. He also has a passion for art and illustration which facilities his creative processes in graphic design.

Ryoji Ikeda: visual systems

The aim of this project is to create a visual system, presented in a poster series and a screen-based sequence, that echoes with Ryoji Ikeda's work. My design emphasises on speed and motion and explores how these factors can alter the appearance of type. Just as Ikeda's music is concerned primarily with sound in a variety of 'raw' states, my visual system also plays around 'raw' visual elements: pixels and straight lines. In addition to the posters and sequence, four sets of customised alphabets are also created. The outcomes showcase how the horizontal and vertical strokes of a digital type fade and propel when they are moving towards different directions.

Acrobat Reader

Many considered ‘The Library of Babel’ as a metaphor for the journey of one's life, having to constantly search for meanings and experience moments of joy and despair. This notion is presented in a series of three books:

The first volume contains the full text of the story but every word is broken down into letters and sparsely laid out on each page, making it a nightmare to read just like the books in the Library.

The second volume is based on the content of the first volume, but the letters are replaced by black square blocks. Wherever the plot or the author's tone of voice show signs of hope, the blocks appear sharper and clearer. Wherever despair is expressed, the blocks becomes faded and blurred.

The last volume combines the content of the other two volumes, showing the letters and the black blocks (which are merged together according to their appearance) side by side to each other on each spread.

The Future

The title sequence is designed for a documentary based on The Future, a book written by well-known politician and environmentalist Al Gore. Using rounded squares as the basic unit, the 'six drivers of global change' are expressed through a series of kinetic type.